This came up in a 10$ buy-in tournament midway through.
Field behaves about what you would expect for a 10$
I don't have the HH, but it was pretty much:

Hero 2000 in BB with QJ
Villain 2000 UTG

Blinds 50/100

UTG raises to 200
Fold to Hero in BB makes call

Flop is Q 5 3 rainbow dry board
I check
Villain bets for 300
I call

Turn is a brick 6
Check
Villains bets 600
Hero??

I would probably fold. I don't give the $10 field credit for having very many bluffs here. He raised UTG so you are only beating QT and a weird AK bluff.

Against a good player I would call down.

Antes?

I'm pretty sure that with an SPR of 3-4 going to the flop you should play TPGK for stacks. Think the proper play is to just check-raise the flop and get it in.

Antes should be 20 at this level.

Do you see this play as slightly aggressive given the hand strength

Slightly? Yeah. But at this point, I don't know what else you should do, and tournaments it's often better to err on the side of slightly aggressive than slightly passive. I might not check/raise it myself, admittedly, but I don't think that means it's the wrong play as much as it means I don't play these spots fast enough. I think however I play it I'm just eating **** and busting if I'm behind, unless a K or A comes off.

Agree that whichever way you play it you're looking to stack off at 20bb. Given that we mostly 3bet preflop with AQ, KQ and QJ are going to be our best top pair and most frequent top pair check-raises on the flop in theory.

Calling down or XC-XR are options too and you should consider which will yield most EV vs the opponent. If he's very bluff-heavy, call down. Very call happy, go for XR. Very double barrell happy bur gives up river, XC-XR might be an option. Note he should also be trippling worse for value - QT Q9 - so if he gets a bit nitty for value that will also hurt your EV of call down.

I agree with the above in theory and against a good/aggro player I would never fold this hand, but against the tight recs in these $10 tournaments I think we can exploit fold turn. There is a player type at low stakes who simply always has it when they raise pre and double barrel. I called so many times because I "have to" and lost so often that I finally stopped paying these players off with TPMK and my results have improved since. Here given the UTG raise, we lose to AA, KK, occasional QQ, AQ, and KQ, maybe even 55 and 33 sometimes, and only beat QT and the unlikely Q9s.

I can get behind this somewhat, but I think QJ is way too good here and you are overdoing it. You are supposed to call most of your pairs at some frequency here, so if you fold all you 3x, 5x, 6x, you are already heavily exploiting the opponent. If you fold a Q on the turn you are making some big assumptions. If you fold QJ you are essentially folding 100% so your read best be clairvoyant. And if you are wrong you are making a BIG mistake.



Here I filtered EP double barrel for players with VPIP of 15 and less. Yes they are underbluffing significantly, but there are some bluffs, and crucially some middling hands like mid pairs. This kind of player loves to bet hands like TT here because they don't want to face the river bet (it's not a mistake in this instance since you have lots of 6,5,3x to call in theory).

Having plugged this range construciton into GTOW, here's what I got.



Yes, we overfold a lot. Almost 30% overfold. But QJ is still +++EV to continue. And remember, this is worst case scenario against total nits only.

Thanks for the detailed post, this is interesting analysis. Maybe I've been too results oriented in these spots and need to make an adjustment.

Thanks for your help as well as other in this thread.